Bullpen not to blame for Red Sox' woes

Bill Balllou

Saturday

Jun 29, 2019 at 5:42 PMJun 29, 2019 at 5:42 PM

Some thoughts as the 2019 season is slightly more than halfway done:

• The Red Sox’ pitching issues are not the bullpen’s fault. They are the starting rotation’s fault. Pitchers are, with a few historic exceptions, in the bullpen because they are not good enough to be starters. Relievers are like “donuts,” those temporary spare tires that are designed to get your car to the next exit on the interstate and not be driven more than 50 mph.

Don’t try riding them to California.

Alex Cora is going to his bullpen way too early and often. Chris Sale has been at the root of this and let’s not hear anything about lack of run support. The Red Sox traded a lot for him, and re-signed him for big money, specifically because he is supposed to be the kind of pitcher who can win the 3-1, 2-1, 1-0 games.

Anybody can win with five runs behind him. Just ask Eduardo Rodriguez.

Boston didn’t lose that awful Wednesday afternoon game to the White Sox because the bullpen melted down — it lost because Sale gave up five runs in the first three innings.

No Red Sox team has ever gotten more wins from its bullpen than its starting rotation but that could change in 2019. Through 82 games Boston starters had 23 wins, the bullpen 21 wins.

• Mookie Betts is headed for an historically huge drop-off from winning a batting championship. As of Friday, Betts’ average was down 85 points from his 2018 performance. The difference was .346 to .261. If that stands, it would be the fourth biggest decline in American League history, year to year, for a player who played enough to qualify for the title in both seasons.

The record seems untouchable. Norm Cash of the Tigers hit .361 in 1961 and .243 in 1962, a decline of 118 points. Next is Goose Goslin of the Washington Senators, who went from .379 to .288 in 1928 and ’29, a dip of 91 points. Third place belongs to Mickey Vernon, also of the Senators — a team the term “hapless” was invented to describe. He hit .353 in 1946 and .265 in ’47, a drop of 88 points.

Vernon is an interesting case in that, unlike Cash and Goslin, his single-season decline did not mean his career was declining. He came back to win another batting title in 1953, also with Washington, and did it in reverse fashion. He had hit .251 in ’53 and his .337 in 1953 was an increase of 86 points.

• Blame Pythagoras.

Red Sox consultant Bill James developed a model in which a team’s won-lost record could be projected by the difference in its runs scored vs. runs allowed. The term is Pythagorean W-L.

Pythagoras, a Greek mathematician of about 500 B.C., is thought to have been a Senators fan, by the way.

In any case, the difference between a team’s Pythagorean record and its actual record can be credited to luck, of which there is a lot in baseball. Boston’s record in 2018 should have been 103-59, not 108-54, according to Pythagoras, so the ’18 Sox had a lot of good luck. This year’s record through Friday should have been 46-36, not 44-38, so the 2019 team has had a proportional share of bad luck.

• Why is it that when Boston played in Tokyo in 2008, nobody said the Sox were going across the pond, but this weekend’s trip to London is just that? Is the Pacific Ocean a lake, the Atlantic a pond? We have a city full of universities here in Worcester, so can some expert explain the difference?

No matter, the London games are home games for the Red Sox. It will mark the first time since May 29, 1932, Boston played a home game somewhere aside from Fenway Park. Back then, the Sox had to play Sunday games at Braves Field because Fenway was too close to a church.

That went on for three years before somebody bothered asking the pastor of the church if he cared that there was Sunday baseball at Fenway, and he said he did not.

London is just the fourth home ballpark for the Red Sox since they opened for business in 1901. They’ve hosted games at Huntington Avenue, Fenway, Braves Field, and now, in England. This is their fourth nation, as well, having also played in the United States, Canada and Japan.

First home runs? Buck Freeman in the USA (Philadelphia) on April 30, 1901; George Scott in Canada (Toronto) on April 24, 1977; Brandon Moss in Japan (Tokyo) on March 25, 2008; and Michael Chavis in London on June 29, 2019.

• Let’s get something straight. When a Red Sox player, or any player, is not included on an All-Star team or given an award, it is not a “snub.” The definition of “snub” is to “rebuff, ignore or spurn disdainfully.” The value judgement that one player is better than another hardly qualifies as disdain.

It is usually just a matter of opinion and in the case of All-Stars, informed opinion.

There is enough artificial indignation out there already. No need to invent a little more.

• Historically, and this goes back to 1876, 55 percent of all home runs are solo shots. So far in 2019, 66 percent of all Sox home runs are of the solo variety. Rafael Devers leads the way with 11 of them; that is 11 of 12 overall and his last 10 in a row have been solo.

A look through the records shows that neither David Ortiz (483 Sox home runs) nor Ted Williams (521) ever hit 10 straight solo home runs. Also, Sandy Leon has hit more three-run homers this year (2) than J.D. Martinez (1).

—Contact Bill Ballou at sports@telegram.com.

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